


It won't be long now

by GwenChan



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife Fusion, Blanket Permission, Hetalia Countries Using Human Names, Immortality, M/M, Non-Chronological, Podfic Welcome, Post-Apocalypse, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26213920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenChan/pseuds/GwenChan
Summary: A story where England's magic makes him jump in time and France has been alive for millennia, waiting to cross him again.
Relationships: England/France (Hetalia)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	It won't be long now

  
  


The sword is so close to his throat it only takes a breath for the blade to cut into his skin, just enough to draw a thin trickle of blood. Good riddance. Every now and then it’s what he needs to remind himself of his supposed humanity.

England is younger than the last time he saw him; tremendously younger. He's just a kid, stuffed into an armour almost too big for him and so old it has become a legend. He has mud-smeared hair and the feverish look of someone who thinks only of survival.

He hasn't seen those eyes in three centuries.

It must always be strange to find yourself in a completely unknown world and still have your nemesis in front of you. It's the first time England has come from a time so long past, a time, the memories of which now seem to belong to someone else.

He will return to his time with the conviction of having died and seen the future, or perhaps hell.

Maybe one day England talked about it to a past self for whom all this hasn't happened yet. Francis must have insulted him, though it is difficult to be certain in the midst of thousands of years of images.

***

England's sword clashes against his shield with enough strength to get stuck into the wooden edge. Judging by the trajectory of the blow and his gaze, Arthur expected a different result. He glares with the hatred of a person who could not bear to see him around one day more. He believed to have already won the war and now he is losing.

France ducks quickly to avoid a kick in the chest.

***

Francis struggles to remember when, exactly, in the line of time they have decided to bury the war hatchet once and for all.

Somewhere, about a thousand years ago, the constant quarrels, the brawls in the corridors of the European Parliament and the bickerings at the UN, the violent battles, everything turned into the irritated mumbling of a married couple.

They were still arguing when the world began to go underwater.

He tries to infer from the gestures, the looks and the clothes, which is the England that appears in front of him each single time, without any warning. Do they hate each other or do they have a truce? Will they end up making love with or fighting for their lives? 

In the morning the space on the side of the mattress, where he doesn't sleep, has a dip. It's already cold, but there's still a bit of Arthur's smell caught in the sheets. Unbelievable how familiar it still is despite everything. It smells of rain and smoke, fried food and of Earl Gray, marmalade and Ale beer.

When Francis looks in the mirror, there's a purple spot between his neck and collarbone. He takes his head in his hands, forcing himself to get used to his normal condition of solitude. He has never been good at being alone. Loneliness is Arthur's prerogative, the proud and snobby island. Sometimes Francis meets with those who have remained, but it's never fun.

The kitchen welcomes him with the signs of a couple of days of a more or less stormy coexistence, the smell of highly concentrated tea and the burning stench to which he should be used by now. He brushes away the shards of the five plates Arthur has thrown at him just before disappearing again.

***

England could appreciate that for the super-important official dinner planned in the framework of the British Prime Minister's visit, France has pulled out the service of Sèvres. Instead, from the way he stares at them, he seems to hate those dishes, which he counts in silence as if he were missing something.

"Didn't I break them?"

"No, you get confused with those with flowers."

***

Arthur speaks and Francis cannot understand a single word. What an irony it is, for England to speak in a French better than his now, with a face that seems to say "look at what I have to do". His face at least is still an open book, from the fold of his lips to the wrinkle of irritation in the middle of those absurd eyebrows.

Is it the pronunciation? Does he want to continue to play difficult? He knows that if he wants he can speak almost flawless French.

It's not a matter of pronunciation this time.

Francis tried to study his ancient language again, hoping for some muscle memory, but two thousand years of modifications, slang, Esperanto and global language prevailed.

As for their common speech, he forgot it when he stopped being technically a nation.

It doesn't help much that after ten minutes of attempts less and less patient Arthur has switched back to English; not when it ceased to be the lingua franca about five hundred years ago. When he tries to answer, Francis hopes the other has learned a minimum of Chinese from the time he had Hong Kong protectorate - it mustn't be too long ago, judging by his clothes. 

***

In the morning, England almost disappears under the weight of all the dictionaries he started stacking. France peeks at his attempts to copy a particularly complex ideogram.

"I thought you weren’t interested in learning Chinese. Why this sudden change of mind?” 

England freezes, the pen hovering in mid-air. He looks at the vocabulary as if it were a strange object.

***

They have always been together, glaring at each other from theirs banks of the Channel; from that first meeting in woods that are now underground, when they were only infants attached to the skirts of nations far more powerful than them.

At the time England had not yet framed his time travel, thinking it was just a joke. The sudden sensations of having forgotten something because of the strange condition of his kind. With centuries of memories and a personality made up of millions of minds, some memory loss must have felt normal.

They killed each other and were reborn again. They inflicted terrible wounds and cured others. They built and destroyed empires; drafted declarations of war and signed armistices under their superiors’s strict vigilance. They established alliances with other powers only to spite each-other and set aside their differences when necessary. They built tunnels and knocked down bridges. You don't live side by side with someone for so long without developing some feelings. They have been everything and too much. They are nemesis, rivals, allies, lovers, family and friends.

This England belongs to the past and must return to the past, but Francis cannot stop grabbing his wrist in an attempt to make him stay. The last visit was two hundred years ago. They are starting to feel long for his human part.

***

England is even more unfriendly than usual. The surprise embrace was meant to be a joke, more or less innocent, but Arthur jumped on place as if Francis had stung him.

He even asked that his seat at the conference table was moved on the opposite side. Now, he stares wearily, as if fearing France will imprison him forever. 

  
  
  


***

"How can you still be alive?"

This Arthur only needed a couple days to grasp the whole situation. His speaking is barely understandable, but Francis gets the meaning.

  
  


He already had this discussion and no doubt he will have it again in the future.

'England comes from a time well before what the world saw as a new beginning. For many of them was the end; an end that Arthur never witnessed in person. Suddenly, no more states, no more borders. Free borders, a single central government.

"France no longer exists. You no longer exist,” continues Arthur, rubbing his temples with the first hints of a migraine. For a person so attached to the supernatural as he claims to be, he simply cannot accept time-travel.

"Someone remained. Someone still remembers. It's enough."

A ship. Once he called himself such. There is always someone able to repair the ship and the ship can continue to sail, even if on new seas and driven by unknown winds. England was good with ships. He's good.

Part of Arthur's culture comes from his own, and vice versa, no matter how much they both refuse to admit it. An idea passes through his mind, but he chases it off immediately. Ridiculous.

***

England stares at the dress that once belonged to his mother and is now well preserved in a display case in the archaeological museum in Paris. One day Francis will give it back. A few showcases further he can admire Gaul's jewels. There is a gold enameled bracelet that belongs to him by birthright and for which he has been fighting with the museum for centuries.

"Anyway, why this sudden visit?" He asks, as soon as Arthur comes to stand beside him, his hands folded behind his back. England just bends over to better read one of the tags. He seems to want to memorise every single word .

***

This is the Arthur he remembers, the Arthur before the temporal confusion. That's where he ended up, in a future from which he can't escape.

It is strange to be on the side of those who belong to the past for once. He didn't even believe it was possible. His tongue itches for all the questions he wants to ask. One look is enough to understand he’d be better without answers. 

  
  


He'll be around for a long time yet.

In the evening, he takes a pencil he still saves and on the timeline that now occupies an entire wall of his living room he tries again to find some logic.

Arthur has never technically died. Simply one day his powers went crazy - blame it on too many internal disorders - with no news about him for centuries. When they met again, after years of useless research, it wasn't even the right Arthur.

There are many versions of England. It took Francis a while to figure it out. It is not so much the delinquent-gentleman's dualism that has always characterized Arthur, but many copies of the same depending on the point of the timeline from which he started.

Someone else would have gone mad already. And Francis starts to doubt he will keep sane forever

***

Francis must have been another person in the distant past. There are things he likes viscerally and others he hates without any apparent reason. He remembers facts that go well beyond the birth limit even of the new immortals blessed by science and progress. There are events in which he is sure to have participated, memories too vivid to be an invention, even though everyone says it is impossible.

Sometimes he wakes up screaming from nightmares he can't grasp.

There is someone in photos so old humans' hands cannot touch them who looks like him more than what genetics can explain.

This stranger seems to know him and Francis has the same impression. He just doesn't understand why the man’s outburst.

They must have crossed paths somewhere. He always crosses paths with many people.

The stranger introduced himself in many different ways within minutes - Arthur, Ang-leter , even as a country of the Ancients. Ing-land . Iunaited ching-dom of greit brite'n end norden air-land .

Even stranger, he knows his name, even if he mispronounces it. Frens. Frans. Francis corrects him.

Ing-land looks at him with a confusion he cannot comprehend. His eyes have the fire only visceral hatred or an equally strong love can generate.

Then he bursts into tears, a cry of frustrated desperation, his brow furrowed and his forearm hiding his face, in a mixture of tears and strange words that must be insults judging from the tone. Francis receives more when he tries to calm him down.

A few days later, he is flipping through those old photos he keeps because his ancestor is there. Curious, even Ing-land had an ancestor. They are identical. 

Their ancestors must know each other and well. In one photo they are seated side by side at a table full of those trinkets for eating the Ancients liked so much. In another they're standing, rigid in uniforms incredibly non-functional but, he must admit, really elegant. Another time, and here they are shaking hands with a little too much energy and forcing a smile while someone cuts a red bow in front of the mouth of a tunnel. The Tunnel. Their Tunnel.

How many stories England had made for that tunnel and how nice it is to be in London without having to fly.

When he remembers, it is never pleasant.

The Tunnel lies split in half at the bottom of the ocean. New nations are taking their first steps in a world he struggles to recognise.

***

England is destroying the pillowcase by dint of biting into it. He tries to hold back sobs he insists in denying and refuses to explain.

Francis paid the price to turn him around to talk vis-a-vis with a slap in the face. Typical English dualism.

"Angleterre, what is it?" he tries again.

Arthur had been the one to show up at his house that morning -  _ so the Tunnel wasn’t that terrible. _ He threw his arms around his neck as soon a sFrance opened the door. They found themselves on the ground, lips on lips before they even realized what was happening. They didn't even reach the bed.

"I don't know, okay?" He blurts out, curled up like a hedgehog. Then, feeble, "I dreamed ... I dreamed you had forgotten me."

"As if it were possible."

***

Arthur wears those clothes Francis has learned to be the sign of the maximum limit to which the other has arrived. In the end, it's normal, everyone dies. It must have happened to Arthur somewhere in a future that has not happened yet.

He wonders what he will do then.

***

"What is it, do I still have hair ugly enough to make you cry?"

Today he is wearing new clothes, clothes he has never seen.

***

He had almost forgotten how red that coat was, crimson to better hide the blood. It always made a nice contrast with his blue. Blue is one of the things he still remembers. But red has always been England's colour.. He took the blue from Scotland. Francis has just studied it.

He is trying his best to not forget. He spends his days reading, striving to believe he has participated in those events that most people say are just legends.

The neat cut of the guillotine on his neck. It is necessary, they say. You still seem too loyal to the king.

He counts scars and memories. This is Vichy. This Waterloo. This La Somme. This is Antonio’s fault, this Gilbert's.

This from when I helped America.

England yells at him in that language which unfortunately he hardly understands, the anger stronger than the confusion of being in a completely unknown environment.Yet at that point he should already be used to time travel. From what Francis understood, Arthur always jumps when he is on the battlefields, and he begins to feel cornered. When the fear of losing gets him.

England points his musket straight to his heart. Again. Perhaps he would kill him now, once and for all, and come back to his own time to find him alive. It wouldn't be a bad way to die. Too bad Fate has other plans.

***

France would swear England disappeared from under his eyes, in the tremendous chaos of the battlefield. Corpses float on the water of Chesapeake Bay, red coats and blue uniforms.

Arthur looks at Francis’ chest, his face twisted in a grimace of sudden understanding for the deception. He shouts to his men to run to Yorktown, barking orders with the cockney accent that pops out when he's furious or desperate.

Then he pulls the trigger with the anger of someone who feels robbed of something very dear.

***

A month. Arthur stopped on the same timeline for a month. A record. Apart from having crossed another version of himself a couple of times and the usual bewilderment of being in a world in which he does not yet belong - or maybe not anymore - things are going wonderfully.

"How is it on your side?" Francis decides to ask him, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor of an apartment in a city where his capital used to be.

"A bloody mess. A terrible mess. "

It is a beautiful month, from waking up in the morning with England, curled up against him with that bed-hair of his, to the furious quarrels over a trifle.

He would do it again without thinking twice, every single detail, even if the price to pay is a millennium of solitude. He waits. He knows they will meet again one day. There is an Arthur who has been stuck in the future for at least twenty years. Maybe in a week, he will find it at the door, in super-futuristic clothes or medieval rags, different yet still equal to himself.

***

Arthur phoned him in the middle of the night screaming about super important documents he forgot to send.

"England, the next meeting is in a month" France mutters in franglais, before abruptly hanging up without even opening his eyes. Three o'clock in the morning is far too early for Arthur’ s hysterical calls, even more so if he starts to confuse dates.

He will have to buy him a calendar.

***

There will be no tomorrow. Francis smiles.

"There is nothing to laugh about."

"If you allow me I would decide whether to be happy or not about my - he underlines my - death."

Yao the immortal may have adapted, in his forced indifference, but he is not Yao. Too many people have been born, grow old and die. He found ancient emperors working as waiters. They all had the faces of someone who feels to be destined for something more. 

There are no new faces, only copies of copies of copies.

The last time he saw Jean, she was planning a trip beyond the galaxy. He met Napoleon sweeping the floor of an elementary school.

The new nations have grown up.

Francis laughs because they have finally stopped repairing the ship and there is an England to keep him company, even if he is not exactly the right one and he speaks strangely.

England bites his lips and sniffs loudly. Big, fat tears roll down his cheeks.

Arthur isn't crying for him. Arthur never cries for others. He has only ever shed tears for himself and for all the things he has lost. Francis is just the latest in a long list and he knows it well. But it is also nice to be able to fool yourself.

"What's up? Jealous that someone has beaten you to it? "Francis teases him, as long as he has some voice. No quarrel, though. This he can concede.

"In your dreams, stupid frog."

He missed that insult. It contains more than what England has ever wanted to admit.

***

"Do I have something on my face?"

Since they muttered a half-salute to each other that same morning, England hasn't stopped a second staring at him with an expression even more irritating than usual.

"What's the matter with you today?"

Nevermind the staring, but pinches are a declaration of war. France rubs his wounded arm, immediately putting some meters between him and Arthur. England's pinches hurt. The rest of the insults die in his throat when he notices a grimace on Arthur’s lips he has learnt to recognize. 

Arthur is worried and, if it weren't absurd, he would say he is worried about him.

"You're real, right?"

"Of course I'm real. Angleterre “- why does he have puffy eyes now? - "what's the matter with you?"

Arthur doesn’t give him time to finish the sentence. He drags him into the first available empty room, grabs the lapels of his jacket and kisses him with a rush he normally only has when he drinks too much.

It would normally make Francis smirk with intent, but Arthur is too strange even for his standards. His grip then is stronger than usual. 

Francis has to struggle to free himself, putting his hands on England’s shoulders to keep him at a distance.

"Arthur, care to explain what's going on?"

A punch in the stomach, though better suited to the England he knows, is not exactly the answer he expected.

"Don't you dare to die on my watch," Arthur mutters, looking down at his feet.

Francis stares at him in surprise. Alright, there have been some internal problems, he hasn’t had a stable government in six months, Mont Saint-Michel is now a full-time island, and he had to redraw some borders; but it takes way more to kill their kinds.

"Since when do you have something to say on the matter?"

To die from another hand would be great revenge, the last one after centuries of struggles and fights.

"I always have."

Still, he must admit a demise from his nemesis’s doing is an end he doesn’t mind. There’s something romantic in it.

  
  


Too bad he can't say the same about the way Arthur’s decides to attack his lips as soon as Francis lets him go. He wanted to rejoin the others. Arthur doesn’t give him the chance. 

He has never learnt to kiss properly or to do things calmly, save for his dear ive o'clock tea.

England has already managed to destroy all the buttons of France’s shirt when his face twists with the nauseated look of when June becomes July and he comes down with a fever. 

He presses his hand onto his mouth and looks around as if he weren’t the one to drag him into that closet. His face glows with indignation when he notices the unfastened belt and the half-lowered zip. What follows is a routine that for once France knows he does not deserve.

And when he finds himself alone, rubbing the five-handed imprints Arthur left on his cheek, he has a vague feeling he too has forgotten something; something very important England once told him many years ago on a night when whiskey melted his tongue and memories.

He'll think about it tomorrow. He has all the time.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Started from the prompt " A is immortal, B has a time-travel machine", evolved into a sort of "The time traveler's wife" AU.


End file.
